0:00

want to talk Canadian politics? Oh my God.

0:03

I've learned a lot about Canadian politics. I

0:05

don't know if my completely irregular

0:07

sort of two or three times

0:09

a month podcast schedule is perfect

0:11

for the Trump era or the

0:13

worst for the Trump era because

0:16

The last episode I did was

0:18

with MG Siegler. And we

0:21

almost recorded a day earlier. And it

0:23

was just like, we were both

0:25

like, ah, I forget. It was like

0:27

a Thursday versus a Friday. And

0:29

we're like, ah, let's just do Friday.

0:31

And then the Friday was the

0:33

day that they announced the

0:35

tariffs. I forget what hell

0:37

happened. that Chinese escalation or was that the chip?

0:39

Oh, because the chip. Exemption

0:42

came out over a weekend. No, that was that

0:44

I haven't done a show since the joke.

0:46

Oh, okay. Yeah, so that that was like it's

0:48

2 3 a .m. And he's hopped

0:50

up on speed Let's say and

0:52

he's like exclude ships or whatever But

0:54

we really did dodge a bullet on

0:56

recording an entire episode that you know

0:58

and and our fastest turnaround time is

1:00

I don't know It's you know like

1:03

24 hours is pretty much usually it's

1:05

more like 36. You know, it's like

1:07

two days Because this show isn't super topical

1:09

so we don't rush through Editing

1:12

but it was seriously

1:14

risking being completely irrelevant

1:16

irrelevant By the time it came out what

1:18

happened that what happened that for us? I can't

1:20

even remember this is the thing like the New

1:22

York Times I can't even remember I have to

1:24

look it up They published every time they

1:27

talk about tariffs this little box score and

1:29

it's like April 12th This happened then they were

1:31

suspended then and it's got a little rundown.

1:33

I'm like, thank you New York Times. Oh,

1:35

you know what? It wasn't Trump's fault.

1:37

It was the the German report on

1:39

Rockwell taking over Syria Oh,

1:42

that's what it was. That's what it was.

1:44

Big Apple news, right? Right. But

1:46

it really, but it really would

1:48

have, I don't know

1:50

if it would have rendered

1:53

the episode Unlistenable, but we would, I would

1:55

have had to do another episode with somebody. Anyway, it

1:57

was good. A lot of us have had to become experts

1:59

on tariffs. Like at one point when we were

2:01

doing, I wish Ari and I were doing

2:03

a shift happens, this big book on keyboards,

2:05

there was a point in 2022 we were

2:07

considering shipping paper across the sea from Germany

2:09

because It might have been the only way

2:11

to get the paper we wanted. And then

2:13

this time around, like I did the book

2:15

last year, I printed it in Canada, How

2:17

Comics Were Made book. And that was all fine. And

2:19

now I've got a book I've got clients I'm working with

2:22

on books. We're looking at where it's got something going

2:24

on in Spain. I've got something in my next books to

2:26

be printed in Canada. So I'm

2:28

like, oh, well, yes, the 1977

2:30

IEPA contains an exclusion for

2:32

information and informational. I

2:34

know way too much about de minimis and.

2:36

It's just part of my life where I

2:38

wish I didn't have to know all this

2:40

international commerce. Yeah, so the tariff

2:43

stuff is all new. Yeah,

2:45

but I think that my irregular

2:47

couple times a month schedule

2:49

has actually worked out well on

2:51

this one because any kind

2:53

of attempt to stay up with

2:56

this dithering turns around. We

2:58

record eight o 'clock Eastern time,

3:00

which is I think eight o

3:02

'clock a .m. Taiwan time. I

3:04

forget when, yeah, I think for

3:06

seven months of the year

3:09

while I'm on daylight savings times,

3:11

we're exactly, me and Ben

3:13

are exactly 12 hours flipped. And

3:15

for the other five times,

3:17

it's because they don't do daylight

3:20

savings in Taiwan. you're off. Yeah.

3:23

So I record at 7 p .m.

3:25

my time and it's still 8,

3:27

he's always 8 a .m. But we've

3:29

been doing the show for five years

3:31

and we have the same schedule

3:33

where we record at least from my

3:35

perspective and from an American perspective

3:37

in the evening Eastern time and then

3:39

the show comes out. I think

3:41

five or six a .m. Eastern time.

3:43

So it's a little more than 12

3:46

hours or a little less than

3:48

12 hours ahead. We're so worried every

3:50

episode when we talk about this

3:52

stuff that is rendered moot by a

3:54

late night through social. Well,

3:56

it's true. And then, yeah, it's, you know,

3:58

Apple Air lifting iPhones out of India, whatever was,

4:00

a billion dollars or multi -billion, which is smart.

4:02

Then there's this whole thing about boats at

4:04

sea. Have you come across the boats at sea

4:06

tariff issue? I believe so, but

4:08

I think I am behind. So explain

4:10

it to me. So there's an issue when

4:13

the normal order of things when tariffs

4:15

are implemented, there's a schedule and time and

4:17

so forth is right now it's tariff

4:19

by truth show social post by truth post

4:21

or whatever. So things. get left out

4:23

or forgotten. And so people are often scrambling

4:25

to know. So if you put product

4:27

on a boat in China, let's say, and

4:29

it could take weeks to cross, like

4:31

you pay for slow shipping or it goes

4:33

from port to port and collects containers.

4:35

Anyway, so you got stuff on a boat,

4:37

it left port and it's not yet

4:39

admitted to US customs, but the paperwork was

4:41

filed before it left port because they

4:44

have to know before it goes and it's

4:46

going to rot where it's going to

4:48

rot. Sometimes it seems

4:50

like the tariffs apply to boats at

4:52

sea. Sometimes it's anything that arrives

4:54

at port after that. And I think

4:56

people have been scrambling at times.

4:58

So there may be, I think the

5:00

way it worked out, there might

5:02

be stuff at sea now that is

5:04

under 45 % tariff, 100 % tariff,

5:06

125 % tariff. So this is an

5:08

additional complication. So a lot of

5:10

the Chinese economy had this big uptick

5:12

last quarter. The numbers just came out,

5:14

I think a couple of days ago.

5:16

And part of that is because everybody

5:19

in America imports Chinese stuff was like,

5:21

oh, get it on the boat because

5:23

they figured they'd be protected. And it

5:25

seems like many of them were because

5:27

they got it on the boat. Hmm.

5:30

Yeah. It's so

5:33

funny what you have to learn. But

5:35

like, when do tariff supply? Does it

5:37

when it leaves? Is it when it

5:39

arrives? What happens when

5:41

the tariff policy changes

5:43

twice? while it's

5:45

paying. So there was

5:47

a small publisher that started to go fund me

5:50

because they said we have books in China

5:52

and our book printer just said they need to

5:54

get 45 % surcharge from us to cover tariffs.

5:56

And they started to go fund me. People

5:58

love them. I've forgotten the name. It's a bird

6:00

name. And then after a few days, they're

6:02

like, Hey, okay, we're going to back off. We're

6:04

actually going to stop the go fund me.

6:06

We'll hold it a refund. We can donate anything

6:08

else to charity for literacy, whatever we're going

6:10

to do because It turns out

6:12

that books are exempt under the IEPA

6:14

Act of 1977, the Delegated Tariff

6:16

Authority from Congress to the President for

6:18

National Emergencies, specifically includes books and

6:20

CDs and all kinds of stuff like

6:22

that. So, ostensibly, all books and

6:24

other things coming in from China are

6:26

subject to a 7 .5 % tariff

6:28

set in 2018 by law, but not

6:31

set under these rules. But everything

6:33

else is coming in with 145%. So

6:35

this publisher was like, I've got

6:37

books. on a boat from China right

6:39

now because how comics were made

6:41

book got acquired by a publisher. It's

6:43

being sold starting June as how

6:45

comics are made for it in China.

6:47

I think it's still on a

6:49

boat. And I'm like, oh, no, in

6:51

this. Oh, OK, no, it's fine.

6:53

They're actually. Wait, repeat this for me.

6:55

The original version that you started. So

6:58

I were made. That

7:00

was my title. And listen, a publisher comes

7:02

to and says, we love this. We want

7:04

to publish it. It's great. We want to

7:06

buy the book off you and have you

7:08

continue. and be involved. And I said, fantastic.

7:10

And then they said, they talked their publisher,

7:13

they talked to the sales force. And they

7:15

came back and said, look, we got a

7:17

few notes. And I'm like, I'm all ears

7:19

because they're great. They're it's a publisher, Andrews

7:21

McMeal. They publish Dunesbury for better, for worse,

7:23

like Red and Rover great comics. And they

7:25

said, we think the title, the salespeople think

7:27

the title should be how comics are made

7:29

because they think it's more active, even though

7:31

it's about history, but it's also about the

7:34

present. And I said, listen. I don't sell

7:36

books and bookstores. I don't think it's inaccurate.

7:38

Sure. And they're like, they're like, the publisher

7:40

said, we think a green cover would look

7:42

better than your sort of pale buff cover.

7:44

I'm like, I am. You

7:46

guys are good. And we changed some

7:48

images on the cover. We got

7:50

permission from Bill Waterson to use some

7:52

Calvin images, which is incredible. I'm

7:54

like, yes, please. So. On the

7:56

cover? On the cover. We've got a couple. It's

7:58

a it's a sequence of color separations of a

8:00

panel. So I don't have the Hobbes, but I

8:03

have Calvin and you know, they had asked Bill

8:05

Watterson, Bill Watterson said, sure. So whatever the publisher

8:07

wants, like they didn't ask me to change anything

8:09

substantive. Of all the

8:11

notes that a creative person

8:13

filmmaker. book writer, bookmaker. I mean,

8:15

I don't want to say author because

8:17

you're more than that with these books,

8:19

right? I I don't want to a

8:21

producer of books. I don't know what

8:23

I am. I don't know. You're a

8:25

singular auteur, in a way. But of

8:27

all the ways that you can get

8:29

notes from corporate, I

8:31

would say changing where to are is pretty

8:34

good, right? Like, on the... so but

8:36

those so those books so they're they are

8:38

bringing like senator like when they want

8:40

to change the tense of that verb right

8:42

that's pretty good when they're like yeah

8:44

we're thinking not comics we're thinking you know

8:46

and you're like it's also they did

8:49

all the work too i handed over the

8:51

files we had a finished book so

8:53

they did all the running head changes of

8:55

course i'm using in design using master

8:57

pages All set up beautifully, but they had

8:59

to change the word. We had a

9:01

good touch with Michael Shea Bonner wrote the

9:03

forward and say, hey, you reference the

9:06

title in your four in your forward. If

9:08

we change it and he's like, sure, I don't get

9:10

it's great. You had to

9:12

have been for that. And and

9:14

I am again, this sounds like I'm

9:16

you've got Shea Bonner to write

9:18

a forward to your book. So I'm

9:20

not name dropping. But he's he's

9:23

been a daring fireball reader forever. Oh,

9:25

that's great. Yeah, he's very into

9:27

Mac stuff. But was like one of

9:29

the very first emails from a reader

9:31

Where when I saw the name in

9:33

my email client I was like electrified

9:36

and then my first thought was holy

9:38

shit and my second thought was well

9:40

it must be a different Michael Chabon.

9:42

And my third thought is always when

9:44

I encounter somebody who shares the name

9:46

with a famous person is don't make

9:49

a, don't make a thing about it.

9:51

Don't be like, Hey, you must get

9:53

this a lot. And then I read

9:55

the email and it was clearly him.

9:57

And I was like, Oh, and I

9:59

went right back to square one where

10:02

I was like, Holy shit, like the

10:04

best novelist of my generation just emailed

10:06

me. It's, it's, but it is

10:08

a funny email to write because you

10:10

do, you don't want to touch a word.

10:13

Right. You know, you're like, But

10:15

I'm sure he understood. No, he's

10:17

he's a very funny low -key guy. It's just

10:19

it is weird. I mean, this is the

10:21

thing too. I got it for that book. I

10:23

got a call and talk to all of

10:25

these. I'm emailing with Gary Trudeau, right? And you're

10:27

like, I don't want to bother this guy.

10:29

The guy's in his 70s. He doesn't need anything

10:31

from me. I'm asking him for stuff. So

10:33

I like don't want to waste his time. And

10:35

he doesn't get on the phone famously with

10:37

reporters or interviewers or whatever he rarely does. So

10:39

so you're like, I'm like, this is scary

10:42

to know this guy I've been reading for my

10:44

entire life. Anyway, it is it is funny.

10:46

Like celebrity is such a weird thing. It's often

10:48

like very micro. But when you're somebody like,

10:50

why really? It's not just like I've seen this

10:52

person in a movie and I admire their

10:54

acting or I saw that screenplay. It's it's like

10:56

I have read 15 books by this guy

10:58

or whatever. It just feels much more personal in

11:00

your head. So. Yeah. So I have

11:02

books. So the long story, the short story

11:04

is so the publisher printed in China because

11:06

they could deliver a $40 cover price and

11:08

I had to charge 65 for the version

11:10

I did because I printed it. Some of

11:12

the parameters I chose were a little more

11:14

expensive and I printed it in Canada so

11:16

I could go on press, right? And so

11:18

theirs is a mass market book. It looks,

11:20

I got advanced copies. It looks great. They

11:22

did a great job, but it's got to

11:24

be on a ship for six weeks or

11:26

whatever. So

11:29

I'm part of the internet. We're all stuck in

11:32

it in different ways. And some people have stuff

11:34

at sea. All right, let

11:36

me take a break here and take our

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And it just sort of

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the work. Actually, I will go

13:25

back there and just say they send

13:27

fewer emails. That's just me. But

13:29

less email, they send less email or

13:31

send fewer emails. Either way, it

13:33

works grammatically if it depends on whether

13:35

you're you're using it as a

13:37

what a collective noun. Glenn, what's that

13:39

would that would be? I tell

13:41

you in my head, I heard fewer

13:43

also. I just heard the word.

13:45

Yeah. I don't think

13:47

I think well it said less

13:50

my notes said less email and I

13:52

verbally botched it and said emails

13:54

turned it into the collective noun in

13:56

which case less became wrong and

13:58

now I had to go back and

14:00

Correct it, but either way you

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time, Notion .com slash Talk Show. One

15:08

of my favorite posts in recent

15:10

weeks was when I did the

15:12

napkin math on how many iPhones

15:14

can fit on an airplane. That's,

15:16

yeah. You messed me up

15:18

because I'm preparing a quiz show for the incomparable.

15:21

And I was going to use that. I'm like,

15:23

nah, everybody knows the answer now. It's

15:25

like once you see an

15:27

answer. You can't unsee it. And

15:29

I don't know, like if somebody

15:31

had come to me as the

15:33

interviewee getting the interview trick question,

15:36

would I have thought to use

15:38

weight or not? I don't

15:40

know. I'd like to think I

15:42

would. But I parlayed off a

15:44

tweet by Ryan Jones, who's

15:46

this. I forget his title, but

15:48

he's more or less in charge of

15:50

flighty, the great flight app. And

15:52

I. Going by weight is such a

15:54

clever way. I worry that my

15:57

mind would have gone to volume and

15:59

because a payload limit. Right.

16:01

Because, well, because you know

16:03

that the weight limit of a

16:05

Boeing 747 or B747, I

16:07

forget the name, but it's presuming

16:09

that Apple was able to

16:12

book the biggest freight plane, which

16:14

is whatever Boeing's biggest 747

16:16

freight plane is. There's a hard

16:18

weight limit. So in theory,

16:20

the most number of iPhones they

16:22

could possibly pack on is

16:24

multiply the weight of an iPhone

16:26

in a package by the,

16:28

you know, and fit it into

16:30

the weight limit. And if

16:32

the answer is wrong, if the

16:34

volume takes up too much

16:36

space, then you know it's fewer.

16:38

But in terms of this

16:40

mental exercise, airing on the

16:42

side of the higher number is more

16:45

fair or more interesting to the

16:47

argument of, well, just how many

16:49

iPhones is that? Because it was

16:52

the India Times that reported that

16:54

Apple hurried up and got five

16:56

fully loaded planes of iPhones out

16:58

of India ahead of the tariffs.

17:01

I would have tried to figure out

17:03

the density per square or cubic centimeter

17:05

of an iPhone in a box and

17:07

then contrasted that to the plane. Only

17:09

because I had to do this with

17:11

our super oak. We were moving some

17:13

pavers from a second use place And

17:15

I was like wait a minute. What's

17:17

our carrying capacity? I look it up.

17:19

It's like we can hold 2 ,500 pounds

17:22

or whatever it is and Each paver

17:24

is 40 pounds. I'm like, all right.

17:26

That's one trip We can't do any

17:28

more of all little sag the tires

17:30

or ruin the transmission or not transmission

17:32

suspension rather So same thing but only

17:34

an airplane full of iPhones, you know

17:36

that bad is an osmium osmium is

17:38

the densest densest substance and at one

17:40

point the US Postal Service offered a

17:42

flat rate box where you could put

17:44

up to 60 pounds in this size.

17:46

Osmium? I've never heard of this. I'm

17:51

going to do real time double check here.

17:53

I believe it is the densest element. Yes,

17:55

is the densest naturally occurring

17:57

element. So denser than lead. It's

17:59

22 .5 grams per cubic centimeters,

18:02

which is a lot. And

18:04

so at one point, the Postal Service,

18:06

US Post Office, had a flat rate box

18:08

where they said, flat rate up to

18:10

whatever pounds, 60 pounds or something. And someone

18:12

said, by volume, if you put the

18:14

densest thing that exists into it, that we

18:16

can get that stable, you can't fill

18:18

up that box. So like, there is no

18:21

way to put that. You can't put

18:23

more than 60 pounds in because nothing weighs

18:25

more than that that would fit in

18:27

it. So I think about that plane too.

18:30

It's why and I'm not

18:32

endorsing. that type of interview

18:34

question as the way to interview

18:36

somebody for a job. But it's,

18:38

it's why those questions are good

18:40

and they're not looking for a

18:42

specific answer that they want you

18:44

to silently sit there with a

18:46

scratch pad and a pen and

18:48

say 350 ,000. And then they're like,

18:51

that's close enough, good enough. They,

18:53

what they want is to hear

18:55

the way you think, right? And

18:57

the way you attack a problem.

18:59

But I remember at one point,

19:01

and I'm going to botch the

19:03

details of this, but there's an

19:05

interesting difference in the movie Goldfinger

19:07

from Ian Fleming's novel, Goldfinger, where

19:09

in the movie, by the

19:11

way, spoiler, but I think for

19:13

a 1964 movie, if you haven't seen

19:15

it yet, it times

19:17

up. But in the movie, there's

19:19

this idea that Goldfinger wants to

19:22

rob Fort Knox, this is man

19:24

who's obsessed with gold and it

19:26

turns out his whole plot is

19:28

a faint and what he really

19:30

wants to do, I think it's

19:32

like set off a nuclear bomb

19:34

inside Fort Knox to irradiate all

19:36

of the gold, which would ruin,

19:38

make all that gold deadly for...

19:41

400 years or whatever the half -life

19:43

is gold that's other Well, who

19:45

knows but the plot but that

19:47

the plot was that he he

19:49

wants he wanted to Trick the

19:51

authorities into thinking he was robbing

19:53

it But he wasn't he was

19:55

gonna set off a bomb and

19:57

wasn't even gonna be there But

20:00

then all of that gold would

20:02

be off the market and then

20:04

the gold he already held Would

20:06

go up in value that was

20:08

the plot of the movie and

20:10

in the novel He just

20:12

wanted, in the novel, he just

20:14

wanted to rob Fort Knox. He just

20:16

wanted to go in there and

20:18

take all the gold and put it

20:20

on trucks. But it really was

20:22

this sort of weight type issue where

20:24

the weight of all the gold

20:26

and Fort Knox. Yeah, it was absolutely

20:28

not even close. Like

20:30

Ian Fleming just totally, I don't

20:32

know, ballparked it. It was like 70

20:34

,000 trucks or something. Yeah. 50 or

20:36

something. Exactly. Right. It's like in

20:38

the novel like 50 trucks show up

20:41

and take all the gold out of

20:43

Fort Knox and instead by weight it

20:45

would have been like, I don't know.

20:48

just like a factor of like a

20:50

hundred off or maybe a thousand

20:52

or more. Like actually would have been

20:54

impossible. It's actually impossible to steal

20:56

all the gold from Fort Knox. There's

20:58

just no practical way. We have

21:01

the infrastructure. This game, I was

21:03

watching a quiz show where they had celebrities

21:05

and comedians and other folks on Richard Osmond

21:07

House of Games. It's a UK

21:09

show. If you ever need a relaxing quiz

21:11

show, it's like 100th the speed of jeopardy.

21:13

It's very pleasant. That's more my speed.

21:15

What's the name again? Richard Osmond's house of

21:17

games. He's the guy. He is a producer

21:19

who became a presenter game show presenter on

21:21

pointless and then is now one of the

21:23

most successful writers in England writing crime novels

21:25

gentle crime novels So there's a round where

21:27

they ask it's called distinctly average and they

21:29

split the teeth There's four people and they

21:31

split into two teams of two and each

21:33

person has to separately guess a number and

21:35

then they average the two for the team's

21:37

answer and it's it's always hilarious, but One

21:39

of the questions was, and I knew the

21:41

answer, this is how many Earths can fit

21:43

into the sun. And the answer is like

21:45

one million plus. Right. So I should give

21:47

you a second to answer. It's about one

21:49

million, like this one point four million Earths.

21:52

But like, I knew this, I just know

21:54

this is a science fact. I must have

21:56

learned it at some point. And some people

21:58

are saying, I think the answers were in

22:00

like the thousands to tens of thousands. And

22:02

I'm like, it is off the scope. Unless

22:04

you know the numbers, you will never imagine

22:06

the sun could hold a million plus Earths.

22:08

That's ridiculous. I used to

22:10

see when I was in high school,

22:12

I was obsessed with that sort of

22:14

mathematics. Oh, yeah. And what I want

22:16

to say, and again, I could be

22:18

off easily by a factor of 10,

22:20

but I want to say that the

22:22

diameter of the Sun is a thousand

22:24

times the diameter of the Earth. I

22:26

think it's roughly, yeah, order of magnitude,

22:28

right? So you could fit a thousand

22:30

Earths. Just like equator to equator through

22:33

the center of the Sun, but therefore

22:35

and I want to say in my

22:37

head that the volume would therefore be

22:39

like a Thousand times a thousand real -time

22:41

newspapers a hot the Sun's diameter is

22:43

a hundred and nine times larger than

22:45

the Earth's diameter Okay, so a hundred

22:47

I was I was I was right

22:49

that off by a factor of ten

22:51

Yeah, so you square that you square

22:53

that you take taught in divide by

22:55

the circumference or whatever that camera that's

22:57

pyre squared, right? Yeah, take half that

22:59

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

23:02

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

23:04

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. knew

23:24

it was something like that, but yeah, a

23:26

million science quiz show. Well,

23:30

but I really enjoyed that. But it

23:32

did make me think of the Goldfinger

23:34

idea. And I guess that I think

23:36

that's why they changed the movie that

23:38

in between because the books had come

23:40

out in the fifties and there were

23:43

some complaints from the fans like this

23:45

doesn't even by the the loosey goosey

23:47

realism standards of. every James

23:49

Bond original novel this doesn't even make

23:51

sense and they're like hey wouldn't it

23:53

be funny and then we could trick

23:55

all the fans who've already read the

23:57

book who come into the movie and

23:59

they'll get they'll get a big surprise

24:01

halfway through that he doesn't even want

24:03

to rob the thing. But it but

24:06

somebody moved all the gold into Fort

24:08

Knox, right? So over long periods of

24:10

time, though, right? That's right. I believe.

24:12

But, you know, actually, as I think

24:14

about it, it's even smarter because isn't

24:16

gold is fungible for the most part. So

24:18

if you stole all the gold, let's say you

24:20

could just airlift all the gold out of Fort

24:22

Knox and add it to your old hold holdings.

24:24

It would still be worth the same amount as

24:27

your holdings would if you had destroyed all the

24:29

rest of the gold. more or less. Maybe. I

24:31

mean, there's many that your remaining goal will be

24:33

more value. But if you owned all the gold

24:35

in the world, ostensibly, gold might have

24:37

the same value as if you couldn't get

24:39

access to all the golden four docks. Yeah,

24:41

I'm not sure it was either in a

24:43

book or the movie. I'm not sure it

24:45

was the best hatched plan. I know. That's

24:47

the one with odd job, right? Yes.

24:49

Yes. Definitely. That's about

24:51

it. The other really funny

24:54

part in Goldfinger is There's

24:56

a part where he, Goldfinger,

24:58

has invited all of the

25:00

top mafia bosses from North

25:02

America to, I think it's

25:04

like Kentucky, wherever he,

25:07

I don't know why he's got a lair in

25:09

Kentucky, but there's horse races and mint julips. And

25:11

he's got this elaborate,

25:13

really elaborate, three -dimensional map.

25:16

like a model train type

25:18

thing to show Fort

25:20

Knox and explain the plot

25:22

and explains this whole

25:24

thing to all the mobsters

25:26

and then turns on

25:28

the poison gas and gasses

25:30

them all and kills

25:32

them. Obviously, you know

25:34

why it was to explain to

25:36

us, the audience, what the

25:38

actual plot was, but why in

25:40

the world would he make

25:43

this like intricate. Super

25:45

expensive super detailed three -dimensional model and it

25:47

if he knew he was just gonna poison

25:49

gas these guys And it wasn't like

25:51

he asked them are you in or you

25:53

out and they're like we're out and

25:55

then he gassed him He was gonna gas

25:57

him no matter what But

25:59

he had to explain the plot to them

26:01

before he did I just like thinking of

26:03

all the craftsmen who had to work on

26:06

that map to that was a big job

26:08

There's a joke in about that map in

26:10

in the first Austin Powers movie, which is

26:12

Robert forgetting his name the guy who plays

26:14

Wagner Robert Wagner says we now are fully

26:16

divested We don't really do crime anymore. We

26:18

have companies that are this and this and

26:20

this and that make tiny models for maps

26:22

All right, there you go It

26:25

really did make me think of

26:28

the Goldfinger plot when I did worked

26:30

out this math or we collectively

26:32

on the internet worked out this math

26:34

of how many iPhones can fit

26:36

on a giant plane and it's like

26:38

with a ballpark estimate of What

26:40

do we say 350 ,000 give or

26:42

take? I don't know. Maybe it's 300

26:44

,000. Maybe they can squeeze 400 ,000

26:46

who knows but let's say 350 ,000

26:48

or or 333 right every three planes

26:50

is a million iPhones and you

26:52

think well That's a lot of iPhones

26:54

right you just think about like

26:56

how many pallets of iPhones that is

26:58

a million of them I mean

27:00

a thousand iPhones seems like a lot

27:03

of iPhones and a thousand thousand

27:05

is a million and that's three planes

27:07

and it's like wow that is

27:09

a lot of iPhones well the claim

27:11

is that they shipped two billion

27:13

dollars worth on those shipments so you

27:15

can actually now sort of almost

27:17

reverse work it out right because that

27:19

means right Well, if figured

27:22

if you it's pretty close,

27:24

isn't it? Yeah. Some

27:26

of the iPhone because the average like

27:28

a thousand dollars. Yeah. But

27:30

although there's a lot of they sell

27:33

a lot of the lower end models in

27:35

some markets. And so maybe it's 70.

27:37

It's pretty close, though. I mean, two billion.

27:39

Yeah. Three hundred five thousand iPhones is

27:41

not is not an ocean away while we're

27:43

in an order of magnitude. But then

27:45

it works out that that's in in a

27:47

typical April. In the

27:49

US, that's about 12

27:51

days of stock. And

27:54

so you can simultaneously think about,

27:56

I found it so fascinating in

27:58

a nerdy way that you can

28:00

like really think about like, if

28:02

me and you, Glenn, if our

28:04

job is, they give me and

28:07

you a couple of hand pallet

28:09

lifters, and we have to unload

28:11

350 ,000 iPhones from a plane.

28:13

Like you and me are gonna

28:15

say that sucks. That's so many

28:17

friggin iPhones But it's only like

28:20

two or three days of stock

28:22

for Apple for North America It's

28:24

not that many iPhones like they

28:26

really can't ship all their iPhones

28:28

on planes This is why they

28:31

load up the boats with zillions

28:33

of them at a time like

28:35

I don't even think it's worth

28:37

doing the math on how many

28:39

fit on a freight boat because

28:41

it's effectively infinite, but it really

28:44

speaks to that sort of

28:46

gold finger, how did they

28:48

even get the gold into

28:50

Fort Knox? Just the logistical

28:52

complexity of just moving finished

28:54

iPhones from China and India,

28:56

but mostly China, about 90

28:58

% are made there, to

29:01

wherever else they're going in

29:03

the world, including moving a

29:05

couple million of them a

29:07

week. to America? It's just

29:09

crazy. So like if they were just

29:11

bricks and I joked about this with Ben

29:13

Thompson and he was like, yeah, but

29:15

that happens to some people like when you

29:17

order new iPhones and there's always every

29:19

year there's a couple of horror stories or

29:22

somebody that UPS drops off your new

29:24

phone and you open it up and it's

29:26

just a brick inside. Right. Right. Yeah.

29:28

But if you were really just moving bricks

29:30

that weighed as much as an iPhone

29:32

and were the same volume as an iPhone

29:34

new and box. from China

29:36

to America, that many

29:39

of them non -stop

29:41

365 days a year. That's

29:44

just like an enormous

29:46

logistical problem. Just almost unfathomable

29:48

that there's that many

29:50

iPhones moving around the world

29:53

all the time. It's

29:55

just crazy how popular the

29:57

iPhone is. It kind

29:59

of helps you wrap your

30:01

head around just what

30:03

a phenomenal hit product,

30:05

it is. Well, Arthur,

30:07

I think it's much more than a billion now

30:10

all time, although I'm not sure in the

30:12

installed base of iPhones and iPads, I'm not sure

30:14

if that's the number. Oh, it's more than

30:16

that. Yeah. No, I think it's the active number

30:18

is over a billion. That so says Apple,

30:20

but I believe it. Yeah, it's,

30:22

you get, a great visualization. I

30:24

have a dig for it. It's

30:26

marinetraffic .com. Oh, I remember

30:28

looking at that in COVID. And you're like,

30:31

and so right now there are a lot

30:33

of boats clustered over near China because I've

30:35

heard reading reports that some boats are just

30:37

hovering out at sea like they're going to

30:39

hold them out there for a while and

30:41

see if the tariff situation resolves before they

30:43

go to port. Unless the at sea thing

30:45

has been solved, which I think it has

30:47

for some stuff. But it's you just want

30:49

to see what marine traffic is like. It's

30:52

just there's just so there's so much out

30:54

there. The ocean is vast or the oceans

30:56

are vast, I should say. And they're just

30:58

so Utterly utterly full

31:00

of of boats which have hundreds

31:02

to thousands or even more down

31:04

the super the super ones What

31:06

are those are called not super

31:08

max the super? But if you

31:10

think about it, that's a lot

31:12

of iPhones, right? We've already talked

31:14

like if you just imagine five

31:16

fully loaded big seven big big

31:18

body 747 freight planes full of

31:20

them is about 12 days of

31:22

stock Every one of those planes

31:24

is like two, three days of

31:26

stock. And I guess at the

31:28

moment, it was actually less than

31:30

that because by all reports since

31:32

I wrote about this, but there's

31:35

no confirmation that Apple's always secretive

31:37

about sales. But off the record,

31:39

comments from people who work in

31:41

Apple stores, you know, to me,

31:43

to other people who write sites

31:45

like this, I think Jason Snow

31:47

told me he got a note

31:49

from somebody that their sales. at

31:51

the height of this tariff panic

31:53

in the stores were like two

31:55

or three times normal volume. Like

31:57

our sales goal for the day, I

32:00

don't know, April 2nd was supposed

32:02

to be like 50. The iPhones was

32:04

our sales goal and they sold

32:06

150. Like, and that just doesn't happen

32:08

randomly. It's just bizarre for like,

32:10

we sold 125 % more than usual,

32:12

or we only sold 75 % of

32:14

our goal or 50 % of our

32:16

goal. There's some fluctuations. I

32:18

don't know, rainy day, bad weather

32:20

or Something's coming up

32:22

that every parent in town wants to get

32:24

new phones to get a better camera

32:26

So sales go up but two or three

32:28

times the normal volume just doesn't happen

32:31

for days long stretches But it did ahead

32:33

of these tariffs. We're all it's like

32:35

buy your toilet paper by your iPhones It's

32:37

just we all know but it's weird

32:39

because it's a difference between a shortage and

32:41

then an unknown set of price increases

32:43

and People have been joking about the NPM

32:46

repository, you know, that has all the

32:48

dependencies for code. Yeah, yeah. And there's the

32:50

classic XKCD, which is shows the whole

32:52

sort of Jenga like structure. And there's like

32:54

one little thing is like one guy

32:56

maintains this. It turns out, well, if we

32:58

don't have a specific kind of rare

33:01

earth magnet from China, you can't make a

33:03

car. And they've cut that off. Or

33:05

I don't know, it turns out there's some

33:07

widget like I'm reading about stuff that

33:09

the Canadian, American, Mexican. Car

33:12

integration system is now it's like one

33:14

unit now sometimes parts go back and

33:16

forth ten times between Canada and the

33:18

US They make the steel is more

33:20

efficient here. They bring it somewhere else

33:22

to be machined They bring it back

33:24

sometimes stuff is shipped to China for

33:26

completion and then brought back in and

33:28

it's all made efficient because of standardization

33:30

of ocean freight because of the standard

33:32

tariff structure and all that so there

33:34

are things that people Like, well, you

33:36

know how to make a car? It's

33:38

like, no, no, we only make 40

33:40

% of the car. The rest of

33:42

the car involves seven other countries. Boeing

33:44

makes its planes in this triple, or

33:46

the Dreamliner famously is made, and I

33:48

think has three major countries involved. It's

33:50

a big deal. Yeah. I read a

33:52

thing. I'll see. I just jotted a note to

33:54

myself. See if I can find it for the

33:56

show notes. But the story tells it all. But

33:58

there is a thing I read. at

34:01

the height of this

34:03

tariff nonsense, where it was

34:06

like looking back at

34:08

the peak of the supply

34:10

chain lockup in COVID. And

34:12

that we have just by

34:14

bizarre coincidence, because these two

34:16

causes are totally unrelated, right?

34:19

The one is this fluke

34:21

once in a hundred years

34:23

virus. And this one

34:25

is, I don't know,

34:27

hopefully once every 250 years.

34:30

madman tyrant president of the United States.

34:32

But the story from a couple

34:34

years ago was that once the chips

34:37

froze up and everybody knows that

34:39

like the cars were a big side

34:41

effect of the chip freeze up

34:43

because everything in a car now runs

34:45

on chips, right? There's like, I

34:47

forget the ridiculous number, but it's like

34:50

500 computer chips go into a

34:52

new Ford. because instead of building a

34:54

completely mechanical system to unlock the

34:56

car door, there's a dedicated computer. You

34:58

hit a button to unlock the

35:00

car door, and there's a computer in

35:03

the driver's side door that unlocks

35:05

the door. And then there's another one

35:07

in the passenger side door. And

35:09

then there's one in the rear seat

35:11

passenger. So now key has a

35:13

computer in it. Your key can at

35:16

least one. And the chips weren't

35:18

coming out of Taiwan and China and

35:20

everywhere else. And so the cars

35:22

couldn't be made. There was no way

35:24

to send the cars off the

35:26

assembly line because they're waiting on chips.

35:30

And a side effect of that

35:32

is that there was less leather

35:34

being made for the cars that

35:36

come with leather seats. And

35:38

that was the hold up. So

35:40

they're stopped slaughtering the horses or

35:42

pigs or whatever they're using to

35:44

get the leather. to

35:47

make the car seats because they're like, well,

35:49

we don't need it. Let's not stockpile leather until

35:51

we start getting the chips. So now they're

35:53

not doing that. But a

35:55

byproduct of the animals that are

35:57

killed to make the leather

35:59

car seats was the gelatin from

36:01

like the horses and pigs

36:03

or whatever. And the

36:05

number one consumer of cheap gelatin

36:07

was like the companies that make

36:09

gummy bears. And so all of

36:11

a sudden, because car makers can't

36:14

get computer chips, there's no gummy

36:16

bears left in the stores. And

36:18

it was like somebody did this

36:20

case study where it wasn't hypothetical. It

36:22

was like they could draw the connection. Here's

36:25

the supplier of this. Here's the supplier

36:27

of the gelatin and they can't get the

36:29

gelatin because there's no dead animals and

36:31

they're not going to pay to kill the

36:33

animal just to get the gelatin. It's

36:35

only cost effective when the animal's already been

36:37

killed to get the skin to make

36:39

the leather seats. at that point,

36:41

it's like, oh, and now it's cheap

36:44

to get the gelatin out of the dead

36:46

horse or whatever. And also, it's all

36:48

very gross. I've got to stop you one

36:50

second, because you're going to an email.

36:52

We don't, in the United States, we rarely

36:54

kill horses for leather. It's mostly cows.

36:56

Well, whatever. But you know, I'll

36:58

just be like, John, we do not,

37:00

we are not driving on horse, maybe in

37:03

France, maybe in other countries. Whatever. The

37:05

eat horse. Yeah, one

37:07

of the reasons that Gutenberg needed to print

37:09

his Bible on paper is he printed

37:11

such a huge edition that if it had

37:13

been cows, they would have needed, I

37:15

forget the number, like 60 ,000 cows to

37:17

print the edition he did on paper. So

37:19

they had some vellum versions that were

37:21

on a vellum. It's a calf, right? They

37:23

had a limited number of printed that

37:26

way, but most of Gutenberg's edition. So that

37:28

was actually a limiting factor was we

37:30

just can't source 60. I mean, it was

37:32

one of them. We can't source 60 ,000

37:34

cows to make your fancy, fancy books

37:36

or it's just a huge number. All

37:38

right. Let me take another break here and

37:40

thank our next sponsor. And this is a longtime

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39:59

thanks to them. Before

40:01

we move on, we've got other

40:03

things to talk about. But that one

40:05

thing that this whole tariff and

40:07

iPhones on a plane thing has clarified

40:09

for me, like I think I

40:12

had a gut feeling. And it turns

40:14

out my gut feeling was right.

40:16

But I'd never bothered. I was very

40:18

lazy thinking it through where for

40:20

a number of years. Before

40:22

this whole thing with Trump and

40:24

the tariffs, it seemed

40:26

like Apple has been

40:28

ever more precariously dependent

40:31

upon China, specifically for

40:33

the iPhone. And

40:35

they've been making moves, especially

40:37

in India. They've been

40:39

producing or assembling iPhones in

40:41

Brazil too for a

40:43

while, but India seems like

40:45

plan B. And

40:47

maybe there's a plan C

40:49

and D and E2. And

40:51

they're making other products in

40:53

Vietnam like apparently all or

40:55

most like AirPods come out

40:57

of Vietnam But for iPhone

40:59

in particular India's plan B,

41:02

but it's only at 10 %

41:04

and Partly I think everybody

41:06

realizes it that Taiwan is

41:08

physically threatened by China who

41:10

claims it's part of China

41:12

and their ostensible independence is

41:14

a crime against the People's

41:16

Republic of China and occasionally

41:18

they We call it

41:20

saber rattling, but it's it's more

41:22

scary than that because it's weapons

41:24

modern weapons of Major war are

41:26

a lot scarier than sabers, but

41:28

they'll conduct military exercises off the

41:30

coast or in the Taiwan Strait

41:32

They fly planes over and the

41:35

threat had been or it still

41:37

is a threat But it's what

41:39

if China decides to pull the

41:41

trigger and invade Taiwan to take

41:43

it by force. What happens? For

41:45

me personally, my friend and co

41:47

-host of Dithering, Ben Thompson, lives

41:49

there. So there's a very personal

41:51

aspect of it to me. But

41:53

trying to be a little more

41:55

objective and apple punted, like, there's

41:58

the question of, hey, that kind

42:00

of would screw Apple, right? It's

42:02

A, presumably if China did

42:04

something like that, we

42:06

would, again, who knows what would

42:08

happen now that Trump's in,

42:11

but with a normal president that

42:13

would. Be like what happened

42:15

when Russia invaded Ukraine where there's

42:17

sanctions and all of a

42:19

sudden all economic Business with the

42:21

country gets cut off until

42:23

this situation gets resolved in a

42:25

fair way and when you're

42:27

Apple and 55 or 60 %

42:29

of your revenue comes from selling

42:31

iPhones and 90 % of your

42:33

iPhones are assembled in China That's

42:36

a problem and when all

42:38

of your silicon all of your

42:40

chips come out of TSMC

42:42

in Taiwan Which would be blockaded

42:44

by China? That's

42:46

I guess an even bigger problem because

42:48

no matter where you're assembling them, right?

42:50

You can't even assemble 10 % of them

42:52

in India without the chips that can

42:54

only be made in Taiwan It's an

42:56

obvious choke point So how would somebody

42:58

as smart as Tim Cook have gotten

43:00

into the situation where Apple is so

43:03

dependent on something like this? And

43:05

the way that I've sort of,

43:08

this has forced me to sort

43:10

of work through is there's no

43:12

other way that the iPhone is

43:14

as popular as it has been

43:16

for the last 15 years than

43:18

doing what Tim Cook did. Like,

43:22

I think at some point there was

43:24

a guy, I'll put a link to

43:26

it. He's just started blogging again, but

43:28

he was young at the time, so

43:30

I'll call him a kid, but he's

43:32

no longer a kid because it was

43:34

15 years ago, Matt Richmond. But he

43:36

was the first person who I remember

43:38

pointing out, sometime around the iPhone 4S, that

43:41

the iPhone, the

43:44

second generation iPhone, the 3G sold

43:46

more than the original, than the

43:48

3GS sold more than the 3G

43:50

and the original combined, than the

43:52

iPhone 4 sold more than the

43:54

3GS, 3G and original combined, and

43:56

then the iPhone. And for a

43:59

number of years, the growth of

44:01

the iPhone was so... almost

44:03

unfathomable that each new generation

44:05

didn't just become the best selling

44:08

generation. It sold more than

44:10

all of the previous generations combined.

44:13

And eventually that stopped. I mean, because you run

44:15

out of people on the planet, you can't,

44:17

there's no way to keep up that type of

44:19

growth. But I think when

44:21

that was happening and people famously remember

44:23

in the original iPhone keynote, Steve

44:25

Jobs, his goal was like 18 months

44:27

from now, We're hoping to have

44:29

1 % of the cell phone market

44:31

10 we'd like to sell 10 million

44:33

iPhones by the end of 2008

44:35

or I think was the goal because

44:37

it was going to come out

44:39

in the middle of 2007 by the

44:41

end of 2008 we would like

44:43

to have 1 % of the cell

44:46

phone market which would be about 10

44:48

million phones Which they hit but

44:50

not by a lot with that first

44:52

generation and half a year of

44:54

3g sales They sold like I don't

44:56

know 15 or 20 million or

44:58

something like that, but like a pittance

45:00

compared to what we're talking, what

45:02

they do today. And I'm

45:04

sure they knew that they had

45:06

like, this is awesome. Like this, we've

45:08

got it. This is really, really

45:10

good. We're going to

45:12

sell a lot of these because people

45:14

are really going to like it. But

45:16

I think it's so much more popular

45:18

than they could have possibly. I mean,

45:21

it's hard to imagine how it could

45:23

have been more popular, right? It really

45:25

could not have been more popular. And

45:27

in those go -go growth years, there was

45:29

no way that they could have kept

45:31

up with demand. No way. Other than

45:33

making them in China, there's no way

45:35

to make them in any other country

45:37

not in India not in Vietnam not

45:39

in Brazil Certainly not in America, right?

45:41

There's just there just was no way

45:43

they could have made some Anywhere right

45:45

they could make some of them on

45:47

the top of Kilimanjaro I don't know

45:49

just pay a lot of money and

45:51

send all the pieces up there and

45:53

But there's no way to make as

45:55

many as they made Continuing to sell

45:57

them at the prices they were selling,

45:59

which people were willing to pay, other

46:02

than ramping up production in China,

46:04

where the physical production capabilities scale

46:06

the way that cloud services like

46:08

AWS can scale, where build your

46:10

new online cloud startup on AWS,

46:12

and if you get 10x the

46:14

traffic that you anticipated, You click

46:17

a couple buttons and you've got

46:19

10x the database servers and the

46:21

automatic replication of and you can

46:23

just scale like that. The actual

46:25

physical production of iPhones in China

46:27

sort of worked like that. I

46:29

mean, it involved building new buildings

46:31

and having China bring in thousands,

46:33

tens and tens and tens of

46:35

thousands of new employees to work

46:37

in the factories, but they could

46:40

do that. There's nowhere else in

46:42

the world where that could have

46:44

happened. And that's how you wind

46:46

up here. They could have decided

46:48

we don't want to be that

46:50

dependent on China, but then if

46:52

they had decided that they would

46:54

have sold orders of magnitude fewer

46:56

iPhones. But this is also an

46:58

outgrowth of decades of American and,

47:00

to some extent, European policy, which

47:03

is, there's detente, right? You're at

47:05

a distance, things are stable, and

47:07

there's entente, we'll use my French

47:09

here, entente, which is where you're

47:11

engaged. And so America was in

47:13

detente for a long time, and

47:15

you had the Cold War in

47:17

Russia, the wall comes down, and

47:19

then what do you do? You

47:21

have to switch to entente because

47:23

you have to engage these economies.

47:26

And so what did Europe do?

47:28

They built the Nord, I forgot

47:30

the name of the pipeline. with

47:32

Russia. They become dependent. This

47:34

is seen as the engagement you need

47:36

to keep Russia. Now, it is dependent

47:38

on the rest of the world for

47:40

its economics. With China, it's been

47:42

the policy for a long time. Like, how

47:44

do we engage this massive country? They are

47:46

even compared to Russia. They're in terrible shape

47:48

by the 70s, right? You've had cultural revolution.

47:50

You've had the great leap forward. You've had

47:52

just massive failures and they are trying to

47:54

get back on their feet. They're making overtures.

47:56

So what do you do? You say, great.

47:58

The detente is we have Taiwan as still

48:00

the Republic of China, that's going to stay

48:02

in place. And the entente is we're going

48:05

to start making it easier to do trade.

48:07

We're going to have agricultural deals and all

48:09

this stuff. So the whole thought was, well,

48:11

this is great. Apple is going to locate

48:13

more and more stuff there. The

48:15

before Xi Jinping will be have Relative,

48:17

maybe not perfect, but engagement and and

48:19

it serves American interests. It serves world interests

48:21

that China is deeply embedded in the

48:23

world economy. It has every reason to not

48:25

want to disrupt that because it would

48:27

disrupt their own economy to such an extent

48:29

that there would be a revolution, right?

48:31

I mean, you respect that in Russia as

48:33

well. So. Turns out it didn't work

48:35

that way. That's kind of, but, but you're

48:37

also, I mean, I'm not disagreeing with

48:39

anything about the labor force is China was

48:42

able, they had, they don't float the

48:44

renminbi. So I mean, this stuff you're talking

48:46

about with, with, with Ben all the

48:48

time. Sure. Yeah. They don't float the renminbi.

48:50

They, they have very, until recently they've

48:52

had exceptionally low labor costs. So there was

48:54

arbitrage that companies could do. But even

48:56

today, I was reading just the other day

48:58

where people are talking about suppliers where

49:00

companies from China. have like spun up entirely

49:02

new operations in Vietnam and other countries

49:04

in six to eight weeks. They've built factories

49:06

and operations that might have taken a

49:08

year or two. in other places. And let's

49:10

forget about regulation and safety and whatever

49:12

might go into that, not to insult those

49:14

countries, but you can't do it that

49:16

fast and do it well typically. So it's

49:18

a very, very agile economy. Do you

49:20

remember there was one summer or so when

49:22

everyone had those fire, the things that

49:24

would break hoverboards or whatever they're called, right?

49:26

And they would break in half and

49:28

the things you would ride on with like

49:30

two feet, right? And then those were

49:32

replaced. Now you have the unicycles and they're

49:35

safer batteries, whatever. But there was like

49:37

a year or two in which Like what

49:39

would happen is what I was reading

49:41

about is a company was making I don't

49:43

know skateboards like six weeks later They

49:45

were making hoverboards and the hot like a

49:47

whole number of subcontractors and contractors Shifted

49:49

over this flooded the market a lot of

49:51

shoddy products alongside good ones all these

49:53

recalls whatever and then they were sort of

49:55

Banned and then all of those companies

49:57

were great. We're just gonna shut down for

49:59

a few weeks I'm gonna retool into

50:01

something comparable because there's always a demand for

50:03

what we can do and we can

50:05

do it fast and cheap Relatively

50:07

cheap. Well, and that's one of the

50:09

differences and I think people just

50:12

sort of I know I did to

50:14

some extent I've learned a lot

50:16

over the last just month really just

50:18

sort of learning things I probably

50:20

should have learned before but I kind

50:22

of knew this I didn't have

50:25

like a deep misconception about the difference

50:27

between traditional American manufacturing from the

50:29

heyday of the 20th century to the

50:31

way China does things now, but

50:33

just one profound difference is that in

50:35

in America In the 20th

50:37

century, the way we think of

50:39

a factory is you build a factory

50:41

to make, if you're going to

50:43

make screws, you build a factory and

50:45

that whole factory is from the

50:47

ground up designed to make screws. And

50:49

if the market for screws dried

50:51

up, no pun intended, I didn't pick

50:53

it for this, but you're screwed. Right.

50:57

Whereas China. has built up this whole sort

51:00

of modular architecture for factories where a

51:02

factory could be making skateboards one month and

51:04

hoverboards the next month and making screws

51:06

the next month, you know. And a huge

51:08

subcontractor thing too, right? Is this, I

51:10

think this has changed. I think it's been

51:12

more monolithic, but I would read 10

51:14

years ago, Bunny Huang wrote a book about

51:16

like how to contract for stuff to

51:18

be made. And I think it was Shanghai,

51:20

I forget, but he was just a

51:22

great hacker guy, Bunny, and he'd made one

51:25

of the. great sort of pull together

51:27

laptops that was open source. And anyway, I

51:29

read a book, he wrote about it,

51:31

and he's like, you're contracting with somebody, but

51:33

then they're contracting with subcontractors who might

51:35

contract with subcontractors. And there might be like

51:37

50 different guys with a couple of

51:39

not what do you call those drill presses

51:41

and things in different places, and they're

51:43

all working to a spec and they have

51:45

to deliver it. So you might not

51:47

get. 50 screws that are perfectly identical. I

51:50

think that's changed because I think there's

51:52

more automation and more robotics being used. So

51:54

there's in 3D printing, all kinds of

51:56

things to make molds more cheaply, lots of

51:58

stuff that's changed there. But it's still

52:00

they are the Chinese economy, the Chinese manufacturing

52:02

economy is absolutely that they are And

52:04

also they don't have a command economy per

52:06

se, but there is also the thing

52:08

that local governments have a lot more say.

52:10

The military owns a huge chunk of

52:12

the economy. Like there's all these things where

52:15

they can say, okay, but we're no

52:17

longer making green things, we're making red. And

52:19

it's like, boom, that's just what's going

52:21

to happen. It's not, you can say, well,

52:23

as a business person, I prefer to

52:25

not make red. That is not your choice

52:27

at some level. And it really does

52:29

come back to, like you said, with the,

52:31

I think this is where you're going

52:33

with the whole Anton thing, where a lot

52:35

of this was just built on, hey, we

52:38

should engage with China, even

52:40

whatever deep, deep philosophical differences

52:42

we have with them culturally

52:44

and government wise and authoritarianism

52:46

wise, giving them a taste

52:48

of. Open market capitalism capitalism

52:50

will will move them in

52:53

the right direction right and

52:55

that even people who aren't

52:57

Die hard. This is my

52:59

favorite philosophy in the world

53:01

is capitalism. Well, I think

53:03

we're everybody was largely on

53:05

board across the left not

53:07

not everybody but for the

53:09

most part there was bipartisan

53:11

agreement that this would move

53:13

them in our drag. And

53:15

it kind of did in

53:17

some ways, but it's just

53:19

the way it's worked out

53:21

is just on the unforeseen

53:24

implications of it. But they

53:26

are a more open and

53:28

capitalistic society today than they

53:30

were when Bill Clinton was

53:32

president in the mid 90s.

53:34

Right. You can become rich

53:36

in China. And it wasn't

53:38

always the case. And but

53:40

then there's this huge rural

53:42

urban divide and people in

53:44

the rural economies have imploded

53:46

health care is imploded for

53:48

people in rural economies. I

53:50

mean, It's such a it's

53:52

a country of contrast as they say

53:54

about many countries But it's in the

53:57

cities that air in the cities like

53:59

well what why would you know? It's

54:01

a good question why it comes up

54:03

is China still burns a massive amount

54:05

of coal They're still digging tons of

54:07

coal. They're burning coal well the most

54:09

people are living in cities that many

54:11

of which are Extremely polluted now the

54:13

air is dangerous for chunks of the

54:16

year So China is moving to solar

54:18

power because it's very profitable for them

54:20

to for the companies to make it

54:22

for them to sell it Worldwide, but

54:24

they also need it. They need it

54:26

for they may not care about solar

54:28

power on an environmental level They certainly

54:30

care about it from a livable level.

54:32

I'm laughing because I'm recalling because I

54:35

think he keeps clowning himself I mean

54:37

he keeps succeeding and he's like the

54:39

second or third richest person on the

54:41

planet, but I can't help but laugh

54:43

at Zuckerberg in so many ways, right

54:45

that he's so he's so He

54:48

can have all the money in the

54:51

world, but you can't buy dignity, right? He's

54:53

got the same arrest of development a

54:55

lot of billionaires have they're like right Do

54:57

you remember the picture? It's probably about

54:59

ten years old now, but he was visiting

55:01

China and it was like a Facebook

55:03

at the time the company was still Facebook

55:05

like a PR picture like Zuck saying

55:07

I'm going for a jog and beautiful Shanghai

55:09

and it was so smoggy Yes, like

55:12

it looked like a sepia tone

55:14

photo like it looked brown and

55:16

it's like I can

55:18

see the idea like let's just let's put

55:20

out a photo of Zuck going for a jog

55:22

while he's on his trip in China But

55:24

when you go outside and the air is so

55:26

thick that it looks sepia tone You got

55:28

to go to plan B, but they're like, yeah,

55:30

we'll just shoot it But it's like can

55:32

you even imagine running to exhaustion in that type

55:35

of air? my god, you really should you'd

55:37

die. I mean we had that in Seattle I

55:39

mean a lot of cities have had this

55:41

so I'm not trying to specialize on us right

55:43

a few years ago. I think it was

55:45

the first fall of the pandemic

55:47

in 2020. We also had huge forest

55:49

fires in BC. Oh, I remember.

55:52

And we bought purifiers. We bought that's, we had

55:54

a 95 masks, fortunately already. And we closed

55:56

up the house and even like, I would walk

55:58

outside at a sensor. I'd go outside with

56:01

the mask. It was red. It was like we

56:03

were on Mars. The sky was,

56:05

was livid. And the sensor I had

56:07

would say the, the count, particle count

56:09

was like 500 or something, the 2

56:11

.5. Micron particle count, even inside our

56:13

house, even with filters running like crazy,

56:15

it was still like 30 or 40,

56:17

which is not considered long term safe.

56:19

So it's, yeah, so I mean, so

56:22

China has lots of problems that they

56:24

are capable of solving, but it turns,

56:26

I think it turns out that. Capitalism

56:28

does not magically produce democracy, which

56:30

is what I think a lot of

56:32

economists and political theorists thought. The

56:34

more people get a taste of this

56:36

rich, sweet honey of capitalism, they

56:39

will naturally overthrow people who

56:41

oppress them and force the world

56:43

wide. We've discovered there are

56:45

ways to engage in capitalism that

56:47

let you have the trappings

56:49

of it, have the profits from

56:51

it, and yet not change

56:53

anything with the political structure. Yeah,

56:55

I think there's something, something,

56:57

something there where the cause and

56:59

effect was yada -yada and just

57:01

sort of, right? But I

57:03

think - All your pet gnomes

57:05

always win, right? Step one. Yeah,

57:07

but I - Stop was in

57:09

step three, democracy. Right,

57:11

but it's like you go back

57:13

to the 1700s and there were

57:15

no democracies anywhere. And then

57:18

America gets founded and it's

57:20

like, boom, we've got a big

57:22

democracy here, over here in

57:24

this new continent. and then democracy

57:26

starts spreading and you see

57:28

this by the 20th century you

57:31

see this correlation where there

57:33

are democratic nations and they are

57:35

capitalist to some degree and

57:37

then very you know it's all

57:39

a sort of a scale

57:41

and they're seemingly related and you

57:44

think okay introduce them to

57:46

capitalism therefore it gives you democracy

57:48

and it's like there is

57:50

no cause and effect in that

57:52

direction I think there is

57:55

probably one from if you can

57:57

put a really respectable democracy

57:59

in place, capitalism is the economic

58:01

system that flows out of

58:03

that to some degree. But

58:05

I don't think it works the other way.

58:07

And I don't think anybody really foresaw that,

58:09

oh, you could

58:12

still be a completely

58:14

totalitarian, completely closed

58:16

communist system and still

58:18

participate in the

58:21

world's capitalist economic trade.

58:24

Yeah, well, I think at a time when

58:26

billionaires were essentially unthinkable I think it

58:28

was hard to think about the concentration of

58:30

wealth having the same I mean, we

58:32

had the United States had broken up trust.

58:34

We'd had standard oil was broken up

58:36

We'd had the I'm gonna forget the name

58:38

of the the the tariff not the

58:40

tariff act the smooth all the smooth whatever

58:42

Holly, right? We had all we had

58:44

all the work to break up trusts in

58:46

the United States and to prevent monopolies

58:49

and so forth. So we figure, well, there

58:51

was a phase in which power was getting

58:53

concentrated. Brief

58:55

phase. But we should have seen it

58:57

then. It's like, but this is always

58:59

the thing is capitalism isn't the best

59:01

system. It's just the one that's the

59:03

least bad. Forget who said something. There's

59:06

a couple. But it's, you

59:08

know, so, and it's also, I

59:10

think we also, we sometimes overlook the

59:12

Without getting through a political theory

59:14

show is like the impact of colonialism

59:16

is India is the world's largest

59:18

democracy and its democracy has trouble. I

59:20

don't want to offend anybody. Again,

59:22

this is hard. The big country, a

59:24

lot of political views, but there

59:26

are specific things that by any measure

59:29

are anti -democratic that happen routinely in

59:31

India, but it's still nominally and

59:33

still in many ways effectively a democracy.

59:35

And Modi could potentially one day

59:37

lose power. This could happen. Well,

59:39

one way or the other, he's eventually

59:41

going to look at the tower. It's true.

59:43

Well, not to listen to how he

59:45

describes himself, but I think if you have

59:47

a country like India that was pillaged

59:49

and rampaged, all these countries in Africa that

59:51

were taking advantage of their natural resources,

59:53

the people in poverty education of China was

59:55

beaten around by all these imperial forces,

59:57

the English and so forth, and then Japan

59:59

of all things. being an imperial power

1:00:01

that inflicted itself on Korea and so forth.

1:00:03

You have all this stuff going on.

1:00:05

You're like, well, how do you recover from

1:00:07

that? There's a generational trauma in the

1:00:10

culture. And you're like, no, no, just use

1:00:12

the same kind of system that all

1:00:14

the people who invaded you used, and you'll

1:00:16

be great. You'll just be fine. It's

1:00:18

sort of like telling people, like, just forget

1:00:20

about your childhood. It's not important anymore,

1:00:22

no matter what happened to you, you're an

1:00:24

adult now, and you can say it.

1:00:26

And some people think that's all you should

1:00:28

have to do. But in reality, I

1:00:30

think there's still generations to work through. you

1:00:32

know, what what these what these

1:00:34

political and economic systems look like in

1:00:36

a lot of places that are

1:00:38

former colonized countries. All

1:00:41

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a great app I registered Glenn

1:03:02

dot fun. Just it was easy

1:03:04

to say on a podcast It's

1:03:06

a real domain dot fun. So

1:03:08

All right, let me ask you

1:03:10

this. So when I set up

1:03:12

my blue sky and got a

1:03:14

custom domain Yeah, I didn't want

1:03:16

to use daring fireball a because

1:03:18

it's long and I thought well

1:03:20

And I still haven't done it.

1:03:22

I got to move I got

1:03:24

a set up like an official

1:03:26

daring fireball Just auto post account

1:03:28

over there But that would be

1:03:30

daringfireball .net. On Blue Sky, your

1:03:32

username could be yourname .bsky .app or

1:03:34

.social. I forget what the default

1:03:36

is for everybody. But you can

1:03:38

also just use a custom domain. But

1:03:40

I registered, of course, more than one.

1:03:44

To add to my lifetime. I mean

1:03:46

who knows how many I don't think

1:03:49

I'll ever beat Merlin I think Merlin

1:03:51

man as I don't know somewhere around

1:03:53

Are you gruber dot foo? Is that

1:03:55

right? Yeah, so I registered three. I

1:03:57

registered three domains That's great that I

1:03:59

could possibly use for this and I

1:04:01

thought I'll make a decision But I

1:04:04

should have just decided and only registered

1:04:06

one. I got gruber dot foo FOO

1:04:08

because I thought that foods kind of

1:04:10

fun forgot there was a dot foo

1:04:12

I got gruber dot blue BLUE,

1:04:16

which I feel like and it this

1:04:18

is why I'm bringing it up

1:04:20

I kind of feel like I should

1:04:22

have just used group it up

1:04:24

blue for blue sky, but at the

1:04:27

time it was early on and

1:04:29

it was unclear to me how Federated

1:04:31

the whole blue sky thing and

1:04:33

maybe federated it's the wrong word But

1:04:35

were we still gonna call it

1:04:37

blue sky or was it going to

1:04:39

be more AT? protocol.

1:04:42

Right. And blue sky would just be

1:04:44

one place where you sign up for

1:04:46

this thing. And therefore gruber .blue. But everybody

1:04:48

just calls it blue sky, which makes

1:04:50

and I think is sort of why

1:04:52

it's more popular because it's easier to

1:04:55

understand. Just go to your favorite search

1:04:57

engine type blue sky, you go to

1:04:59

blue sky, create an account and there

1:05:01

you are. I kind of feel like

1:05:03

I should use gruber .blue instead of

1:05:05

gruber .foo. But I also registered gruber .social.

1:05:07

Oh, interesting. Well, you can use that.

1:05:09

Yeah, I mean, I'm I loved that

1:05:11

mastodon became a thing because I thought

1:05:13

for many years we should see what

1:05:15

I was hoping that something federated would

1:05:17

happen. So we could see we've never

1:05:19

really had a system like it. I

1:05:21

mean, use that as the closest thing

1:05:24

to mastodon before mastodon. And it wasn't

1:05:26

really it sort of was because each

1:05:28

use net server could kind of choose

1:05:30

which other use that service link to

1:05:32

and you could. But like that was

1:05:34

the closest thing. So. I loved Mastodon.

1:05:36

I love the Fediverse because the Fediverse

1:05:38

has a lot of itches that are

1:05:40

being scratched that don't need 10 million

1:05:42

or 100 million people. But so

1:05:44

I know the AT protocol is is

1:05:46

different. And I mean, Blue Sky solved the

1:05:48

problem. You wrote about that recently, too,

1:05:50

is that you just go to a place

1:05:52

and you sign up, go to Blue

1:05:54

Sky, you sign up. And then if if

1:05:56

you want to duplicate it, want to

1:05:58

do other things, you can do it. But

1:06:01

it's that's It's one place one sign

1:06:03

up is this is the way to go

1:06:05

to start right and if it goes

1:06:07

bad in the future because it is not

1:06:09

that I guess at some level Jack

1:06:11

Dorsey still is a funder behind it He

1:06:13

doesn't seem to have any interest in

1:06:15

it. He I don't think he's got any

1:06:17

control anymore Yeah, I don't think he

1:06:19

has control the New Yorker article about the

1:06:21

CEO Jay Graber Yeah, who's who's really

1:06:23

interesting. Like her background is interesting. The whole

1:06:25

thing. I have a friend here in

1:06:27

Seattle. I can say this because it was

1:06:29

on the press release. He is a

1:06:31

personal investor in Blue Sky. And I was

1:06:33

like, oh, I trust it more if

1:06:35

you're investing in Joe because that was a

1:06:37

good sign when they did a recent

1:06:39

round of. Yeah, but say say what you

1:06:41

want about Dorsey, who I think is

1:06:43

I mean, I've met him a couple of

1:06:45

times and I've I've known him since

1:06:47

before Twitter was even a thing. Again,

1:06:50

he was a daring fireball rear a long time

1:06:52

ago. But I kind of feel he's gone a

1:06:54

little nuts. I mean, God bless him. But

1:06:56

like, yeah. I mean,

1:06:58

but you know, he's into

1:07:00

the crypto and what's

1:07:03

the thing he's more interested

1:07:05

in is called Nostradamus

1:07:07

or Noster. Which

1:07:09

is named after Nostradamus.

1:07:11

I don't know why, but

1:07:13

it's like a cryptographic

1:07:15

version of Twitter and it's

1:07:17

like, and you're like, and if

1:07:19

you haven't heard of it and you're like,

1:07:21

if you really are thinking. Well,

1:07:23

who's the sort of person who thinks

1:07:26

the answer to a Twitter -like network

1:07:28

is to base it based it on

1:07:30

crypto? Right, those are the people who

1:07:32

are using it and so it's great

1:07:34

that it exists because it's like a

1:07:36

whole place for those people to go

1:07:38

and just Stay off all the other

1:07:40

networks that the rest of us use

1:07:42

right and no, it's N .O .S .T .R.

1:07:44

I was trying to write the right.

1:07:46

Yeah, no, it's here. Yeah, it's Don't

1:07:49

know I but he's he was like

1:07:51

we're all that everyone who just claims

1:07:53

moderation it feels like they've never been

1:07:55

a victim of Of what happens? I

1:07:57

mean we can see there's actually really

1:07:59

great right now because if you want

1:08:01

to understand what an unmoderated mostly unmoderated

1:08:03

social network looks like we go to

1:08:05

formerly known as Twitter right and That's

1:08:07

just it and then you can see

1:08:09

you can see what shakes out there

1:08:12

and you can see blue sky which

1:08:14

has Essentially, it's not

1:08:16

exactly opt -in, but their moderation is

1:08:18

relatively light, and they make it

1:08:20

so you can choose which moderation

1:08:22

services you belong to. And ultimately,

1:08:24

if their federation grows, then you

1:08:26

could be on unmoderated blue sky

1:08:28

-like servers, and that would be

1:08:30

fine. So it is a form

1:08:32

of the unfettered free speech, but

1:08:34

with controls that let people start

1:08:36

from a position of having some

1:08:38

power over it. And again, I

1:08:40

like if I could only use

1:08:42

one of these things. Just

1:08:45

by like a I don't know

1:08:47

too many parking tickets or

1:08:49

speeding for me speeding tickets and

1:08:51

the penalty is I'm only

1:08:53

allowed to use one social network

1:08:55

I would pick mastodon just

1:08:57

because it's where my audience is

1:08:59

and people who I would

1:09:01

consider friends and Where I get

1:09:03

like the best and most

1:09:06

direct reader feedback it is It's

1:09:08

not the same as Twitter

1:09:10

was at at its best years,

1:09:12

which I would define as

1:09:14

maybe like 2010 to 2014 or

1:09:16

so, or maybe even a

1:09:18

little earlier. But there were a

1:09:20

couple of like a five

1:09:22

year period there where it really

1:09:24

felt like I had like

1:09:27

the best feedback mechanism for public

1:09:29

comments on Daring Fireball all

1:09:31

on Twitter, just either at Daring

1:09:33

Fireball or at Groober replies

1:09:35

about my articles. They were public.

1:09:38

I could respond to them and

1:09:40

it was. It never felt

1:09:42

spammed. It never felt like anybody was trying. Occasionally

1:09:44

somebody would try to, some kind of scammer

1:09:46

would try to horn their way in and then

1:09:48

I'd just block that person and they'd be

1:09:50

done. But mastodon is that

1:09:52

for me. It's just

1:09:55

the highest signal

1:09:57

to noise. But it's,

1:09:59

it is mostly

1:10:01

for Apple tech nerdy

1:10:03

type stuff. the

1:10:06

broader politics and national affairs type stuff,

1:10:08

I don't really see too much

1:10:10

of that. Man, it's partially by choice

1:10:12

of who I follow on Mastodon,

1:10:14

but I also don't think that action

1:10:16

is there. I feel

1:10:18

like it just never hit

1:10:20

for non -nerds. It is, it

1:10:23

is sort of Useneti, right?

1:10:25

It is, and that's sort

1:10:27

of what I like about

1:10:29

Mastodon. I do, I like

1:10:31

that my crowd is computer

1:10:34

nerdy. But it's

1:10:36

such a turn off because it's so

1:10:38

confusing. The whole concept is so hard

1:10:40

to explain and so confusing. And,

1:10:42

okay, how do I get started? Well,

1:10:44

pick an instance. And it's like, you've

1:10:46

already lost 90 % of the people.

1:10:48

I gotta say, this is the thing.

1:10:50

I wrote an article when Mastodon

1:10:52

started her first power up when like

1:10:54

November 2022 in Muscat. Twitter, was it

1:10:56

2022? My God, or was it

1:10:58

23? Yeah, it's been a while

1:11:00

now. Anyway, so I wrote a

1:11:03

piece for tidbits, which is mostly folks like

1:11:05

us, like people between about 40 and 80

1:11:07

who've been using computers for a while. We're

1:11:09

sort of interested in new stuff, but not

1:11:11

necessarily interested in everything. It's super cutting edge.

1:11:13

So like, here's what mastodons about. You've been

1:11:15

hearing about it and it felt very complicated,

1:11:17

but solvable for that crowd. But then I

1:11:20

think probably a year later, like mastodon social,

1:11:22

you just go to mastodon social and sign

1:11:24

up there. So. There are issues with that,

1:11:26

and there's costs. There's like a bunch of

1:11:28

stuff about saying, just go to Mastodon Social.

1:11:31

But that was what I would tell somebody. I'd like to

1:11:33

try out Mastodon. Don't worry about

1:11:35

the instances. Go there. Yeah. See what's

1:11:37

happening. Because if any, it is

1:11:39

the biggest server. It is the

1:11:41

one from Eugene, I forget

1:11:43

his last name, the creator

1:11:45

of Mastodon. Rochko? Yeah, Rochko. And

1:11:48

it's like, if Mastodon .Social goes

1:11:50

down, Mastodon's going down.

1:11:52

Yeah, nobody could talk to us.

1:11:54

Yeah, it's not as decentralized

1:11:56

as ideally you would think it.

1:11:58

It's not a panacea. It's

1:12:01

not an ideal world like email

1:12:03

was in the 90s, right,

1:12:05

where anybody could run their own

1:12:07

email server and you were

1:12:09

just fine. I mean,

1:12:11

I go to Blue Sky, you go

1:12:13

to Blue Sky, you can talk about

1:12:15

tariffs, I go to Mastodon, it's like

1:12:17

the latest version of Sequoia, broke. the

1:12:19

ability to set your screen desktop color

1:12:21

to a custom color. And then

1:12:23

it's like, now it's fixed. That's where I

1:12:25

go to have that conversation. And I know

1:12:28

10 people will give me tips, will know,

1:12:30

confirm it. It's fantastic. Right. But

1:12:32

it just is what it is.

1:12:34

And I don't pass judgment. And it's

1:12:36

nice to have multiple networks. And

1:12:38

I've written about this. Overall, because

1:12:41

my social experience is sort of bifurcated

1:12:43

now. Primarily a cross mastodon and blue

1:12:45

sky and then terse tertiarily Threads which

1:12:47

still has a fair amount of signal

1:12:49

and I still do check Twitter X

1:12:51

So there's some action there and I

1:12:53

get replies and I do get DMs

1:12:55

and I'm not I Don't I don't

1:12:57

post too much original stuff there, but

1:12:59

I don't avoid it But I also

1:13:02

don't blame anybody who was like screw

1:13:04

that I I Deleted my account a

1:13:06

year ago. It's like well, I totally

1:13:08

am like I could see that yeah

1:13:10

You're not paying, like, you're not paying

1:13:12

Elon to use it. No. And he's

1:13:14

not making money off you. No, and

1:13:16

if you go there and see that

1:13:18

I have that blue check, they gave

1:13:20

me the blue back. Oh, they did

1:13:22

it to some people. They bought it.

1:13:25

Because you have a bazillion followers who

1:13:27

were there in the early days. I

1:13:29

never paid for a blue check in

1:13:31

the old days because they gave me

1:13:33

one for being who I am long

1:13:35

ago, and then they gave it back

1:13:37

to me. It's so funny. If Blue

1:13:39

Sky said, we have a $20 a

1:13:41

year subscription that we're offering, and you

1:13:43

get nothing for it. I would say

1:13:45

great, sign me up. I think they

1:13:48

get a million people like, great, here's

1:13:50

20 bucks a year, whatever, add features

1:13:52

later and increase the price, I don't

1:13:54

care, but right now. Anyway, the one

1:13:56

thing I don't know, it is very

1:13:58

easy if you own a domain name,

1:14:00

it's very easy to use your domain

1:14:02

name as your username on Blue Sky,

1:14:04

which is very cool. You can do

1:14:06

it two different ways. I think originally

1:14:08

you had to do the C name

1:14:11

record thing. It's like you you go

1:14:13

into your domain registrar and set up

1:14:15

a certain record that blue sky can

1:14:17

check and you just put a little

1:14:19

token of strings there and you putting

1:14:21

those token of strings there proves that

1:14:23

you the person who control has access

1:14:25

to this current blue sky accounts settings

1:14:27

on blue sky also have access to

1:14:29

the domain name records for that domain.

1:14:32

And if that's really not you, you've

1:14:34

been hacked so thoroughly, forget it, you've

1:14:36

just lost your identity. But you can

1:14:38

do both. There's another way I

1:14:40

think you can put, like, if you don't have

1:14:42

the DNS accessor, it's too confusing. You can put,

1:14:44

like, a secret file at the root of that

1:14:46

the well -known? It's the dot slash well -known. Yeah,

1:14:48

something like that. Yeah, and oh, by the way,

1:14:50

you know how Blue Sky, the only way it's

1:14:52

been money until its recent spate of t -shirt

1:14:54

sales for that t -shirt that she's wearing, is domain

1:14:56

names. Somebody's like, I need a domain name, and

1:14:58

they're like, great, we'll sell you one. If you

1:15:01

want one, great, we'll sell you one. And they're

1:15:03

making a little money off it, but then they

1:15:05

made a lot of money off t -shirts. Anyway,

1:15:07

but I will say, I'll just go

1:15:09

back to Jack, and I do think

1:15:11

his heart's in the right place, and

1:15:14

I do think it's kind of fascinating

1:15:16

that Blue Sky really directly, not like

1:15:18

indirectly, is directly spun off from Twitter,

1:15:20

like old Twitter, you know? That

1:15:22

was, the name Blue

1:15:24

Sky comes from like a Blue

1:15:26

Sky project of like... circa

1:15:28

2016 or 17 like how would

1:15:31

we do this if we

1:15:33

had it to do all over

1:15:35

again? We would do it

1:15:37

like this and from people who

1:15:39

were in in the mine

1:15:41

Grinding out the daily day -to -day

1:15:44

operations of Twitter circa 2016

1:15:46

17 18 somewhere around there Like

1:15:48

what would those people wish

1:15:50

had been done differently from the

1:15:52

inception of the network? That's

1:15:55

where they came up with the AT protocol

1:15:57

and and blue sky and it's it's really

1:15:59

I don't know if you uncouple his some

1:16:01

of his Ideas his political ideology and moderation

1:16:03

from it the nature of it is great

1:16:05

And I'm really glad he did it. Yeah,

1:16:07

because if he hadn't I don't know what

1:16:09

the landscape would be like Matt Massadon would

1:16:11

probably be busier But there is it is

1:16:13

funny. I think of Massadon is like is

1:16:15

like a golden retriever Right and and blue

1:16:17

sky is more like a pointer or a

1:16:20

v -slot like something like like a Vimeron

1:16:22

or it's like a little more You know,

1:16:24

you you don't really pet that dog but

1:16:26

you go and run around with it a

1:16:28

lot needs a lot of exercise And but

1:16:30

I like I go to mess and I'm

1:16:32

like, ah, this is really nice. This is

1:16:34

really, huh? Yeah, where's your time spent? Where

1:16:37

I spend probably far too much time

1:16:39

on blue sky and it's probably it's probably

1:16:41

three to one blue sky to mast

1:16:43

it on these days. The reason though is

1:16:45

interesting and it's creating all these projects

1:16:47

these days and part of it is where

1:16:49

do I find the people interested in

1:16:51

what I'm doing because I'm kind of always

1:16:53

hustling a little bit trying not to

1:16:55

be trying not to be hypey or exhausting

1:16:57

to people but I am a little

1:16:59

and without algorithms on either side I've gotten

1:17:01

used to the idea you have to

1:17:03

kind of talk about what you're doing much

1:17:06

more than I'm comfortable with because otherwise

1:17:08

people just don't see it right. So

1:17:10

There's a podcast I listened to that's

1:17:12

for cartoonists for webcomics artists. Others called

1:17:14

webcomic lab by my friend Dave Kellett

1:17:16

and his good buddy Brad Gagar. So

1:17:18

I my guy garb saying it wrong.

1:17:20

And they I listened to this since

1:17:22

it started because Brad's a friend, but

1:17:24

it's so useful for creators. And

1:17:26

and they routinely do kick starters where they

1:17:29

raise tens of thousands over a hundred thousand

1:17:31

dollars for a collection of comics or a

1:17:33

book. So they're They have enough of a

1:17:35

fan base that they can roll that into

1:17:37

the bookside. And Dave recently did

1:17:39

a very successful campaign for a book

1:17:41

of dog cartoons from his regular Sheldon comic

1:17:43

series. And he said he did the

1:17:45

test. He didn't do any promotion on X.

1:17:47

He didn't use Facebook. I don't think

1:17:49

he used threads. And he's like, well, what

1:17:51

was the result like? And Blue Sky

1:17:53

referred a massive amount of traffic. It was

1:17:55

like, like better than Twitter. Twitter may

1:17:58

have ever done for him. Certainly replaced anything

1:18:00

he had lost on Twitter. And Mastodon

1:18:02

was, I think he's using Mastodon maybe a

1:18:04

little bit, but he wasn't even, he

1:18:06

didn't even use Instagram. Instagram does not perform

1:18:08

for artists, cartoonists anymore, or creators because

1:18:10

of how they work. So he's limited to

1:18:12

social networks. He does. So to some

1:18:14

extent that shapes my usages is I have

1:18:16

friends at Mastodon. So I go there

1:18:18

and I chat and I keep up with

1:18:20

stuff and I post my projects at

1:18:23

Blue Sky. I'm a little more, let's say

1:18:25

mercenary, but I'm definitely there for the

1:18:27

political conversation, but also to say, hey, here's

1:18:29

the thing I'm working on. Maybe you

1:18:31

might care about. So once a day, once

1:18:33

a day, sorry, a period. All

1:18:38

right, I'm going to take one last break

1:18:40

here. We have a fourth sponsor for the

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1:20:41

right. Well, you did a

1:20:43

perfect segue there before that

1:20:45

read, Glenn, with Kickstarter. You

1:20:47

just completed, you're the kickstarteriest

1:20:49

person I think I know. And

1:20:52

it's yet another successful one for you.

1:20:54

Where you you've done a new version

1:20:56

of your book six centuries of type

1:20:58

and printing Yeah, this was a very

1:21:00

interesting one for me and I'll say

1:21:02

thank you very much because the fireball

1:21:04

effect is real And I appreciate my

1:21:06

wife was touched by what you wrote

1:21:08

about How I how I write which

1:21:10

was I'm touched by it too, but

1:21:12

I will tell you she was also

1:21:14

touched. What did I say? I already

1:21:16

forgot. I'll make people read as beautiful.

1:21:18

I can't say that I would I

1:21:21

would be embarrassed. It's it's very nice

1:21:23

and pretty sufficient. But it's interesting because

1:21:25

there's that thing like we get a

1:21:27

little jaded about like somebody writes about

1:21:29

something and people are people reading blogs

1:21:31

people taking action. Well, your readers do

1:21:33

things. Your readers like click links and

1:21:35

buy books and it's especially cheering. Right

1:21:37

now with the economy and flux and

1:21:39

everything else that people are like, this

1:21:41

is a book. I'm going to go

1:21:43

buy it. It's about design. John wrote

1:21:45

it up. This is great. So it's

1:21:47

I tested. So I'm consulting on Kickstarter

1:21:49

campaigns now. I did a work with

1:21:51

Marcin on Shift Happens over several years,

1:21:53

and I've got a client. We're finishing

1:21:55

a book that started with 100 ,000

1:21:57

word management. How do you pronounce his

1:21:59

name? Marcin? I'm sure I'm getting it

1:22:01

slightly wrong. It's Marcin that we shattery.

1:22:03

If I'm doing it as close to

1:22:05

as possible, I don't know how to

1:22:08

pronounce the Polish letters in it. So

1:22:10

I always make a... make a mash

1:22:12

of it, but he's he's a lovely

1:22:14

fella and he should read you probably

1:22:16

you did link to his Gorton essay

1:22:18

Yeah, which was a thing of beauty

1:22:20

and wonder and yeah if his name

1:22:22

rings a bell to anybody listening So

1:22:24

he and I think I linked to

1:22:26

the shift happens, which is it's a

1:22:28

whole coffee table style book about break

1:22:30

your coffee table of keyboards Yeah, it's

1:22:32

a couple of volumes, but just an

1:22:34

exquisite years -long deep dive wonderfully

1:22:37

wealth photographed and

1:22:39

deeply researched book into

1:22:41

the history of

1:22:44

keyboards. And then

1:22:46

I think at the beginning of

1:22:48

the year around January or

1:22:50

so, a couple of months ago,

1:22:52

he had this whole web, wonderful,

1:22:55

splendid, interactive,

1:22:57

sort of like the

1:22:59

Steve Jobs book, Make

1:23:02

Something Wonderful. Was that

1:23:04

the name of the Steve Jobs sounds, yeah,

1:23:06

I think that's right. where they didn't sell

1:23:08

copies of that book. They printed up

1:23:10

a bunch of them and gave them to

1:23:12

employees at Apple and Love From and other

1:23:14

things. And I was lucky enough to get

1:23:16

one from a friend at Love From. And

1:23:19

it is a wonderful printed book.

1:23:21

It's actually the exact same footprint as

1:23:23

yours. I don't have that me.

1:23:25

Oh, that's funny. Is that a standard

1:23:27

size? It's exactly the same footprint. so.

1:23:30

I designed mine to fit. This is one of these

1:23:32

things like, you know the old story, I've probably told

1:23:34

it on the podcast before, where somebody, a woman gets

1:23:36

married, her husband says, why do you cut the ends

1:23:38

off the ham when you cook it? And she said,

1:23:40

I don't know, my mom always did it. I guess

1:23:42

it makes it juicier. They go to Thanksgiving. And

1:23:45

the mom says, she says, mom,

1:23:47

why do you do that? She's like,

1:23:49

I don't know, grandma did. They

1:23:51

get grandma out of the. out of

1:23:53

her room and say, the pan

1:23:55

was only this big. And so the

1:23:57

reason the book is this dimension

1:23:59

is because we designed the tiny type

1:24:01

museum case, the woodworker I work

1:24:04

with. We designed it backwards from the

1:24:06

flat rate, large size of the

1:24:08

postal box. We had an approximate size,

1:24:10

which was shockingly close to a

1:24:12

bread box. It is exactly the size

1:24:14

of the bread box. I'm kidding.

1:24:16

But so the book had to fit

1:24:18

into a slot in the museum.

1:24:20

So anyway, it's a long, it's a

1:24:22

boring story. No, it's not a

1:24:24

boring. Well, if I paid, if I

1:24:27

didn't pay the flat rate price,

1:24:29

it would have gone from $20 to

1:24:31

ship to like $45 or something

1:24:33

for per unit. So it's crazy. It's

1:24:35

exactly like how the gummy bears

1:24:37

disappeared because they couldn't get computer chips

1:24:39

to make Ford cars. That's

1:24:41

how big the pan was.

1:24:44

But Marchine made a route. Crafted

1:24:46

he didn't just write and

1:24:48

he didn't just photograph but then

1:24:50

he crafted this wonderful interactive

1:24:52

web page with this sort of

1:24:54

booklet length Exegis about the

1:24:56

Gorton typeface which also, you know,

1:24:58

you can see where he

1:25:00

got into it because Gorton was

1:25:02

or it still is the

1:25:04

typeface on a ton of mid

1:25:06

20th century classic keyboards typewriters.

1:25:08

Yeah It's what he called a

1:25:10

uniline face. Is that the

1:25:12

right word? It's something like that.

1:25:14

It's where you need it.

1:25:16

It's a consistent line. So can

1:25:18

be etched. It can be

1:25:20

carved. It can be traced. But

1:25:22

you only have one single

1:25:25

width marker or a router to

1:25:27

do it. But it's a

1:25:29

consistent design. And once you start seeing

1:25:31

it, I'm sure this happened to you.

1:25:33

It's like once it's identified to you,

1:25:35

oh, it is. It's everywhere. He captured

1:25:37

a lot of the beauty. And it's

1:25:39

so utilitarian. But then it gets used

1:25:41

sometimes for gorgeous purposes. Yeah.

1:25:43

Well, what's the first

1:25:45

typeface you can remember

1:25:48

noticing? Probably. Well,

1:25:50

yeah, probably times New Roman, something like

1:25:52

that. My dad got a job

1:25:54

in display advertising at a weekly newspaper

1:25:56

in Eugene, Oregon during like, I

1:25:58

think during the recession of 79 or

1:26:00

80. And so he would bring

1:26:02

font stuff home. He had like font

1:26:04

books and things. And so I

1:26:06

started learning about typefaces just. by inference

1:26:08

from him. So it's probably like

1:26:10

times in Palatino, although I'm saying that

1:26:12

wrong, though, because Palatino was big

1:26:14

later in the photo type days. I

1:26:16

don't know what the biggest font was, but

1:26:18

I feel like it's times was the one I

1:26:20

remember. For me, it would

1:26:23

be Helvetica, but I didn't know what

1:26:25

it was called. But I remember

1:26:27

we used to do and are probably

1:26:29

around the same era, like 78,

1:26:31

79. So I'm five, six years old.

1:26:34

And we used to do most

1:26:36

of our grocery shopping at

1:26:38

a chain grocery store called Pathmark.

1:26:40

It was sort of regional in the

1:26:43

Northeast. I think it's long defunct

1:26:45

at this point. But

1:26:47

Pathmark had a house

1:26:49

brand. They had two

1:26:51

houses. I've always

1:26:53

been very brand sensitive. I mean,

1:26:55

just it's innate. And my

1:26:57

son inherited it to some degree,

1:26:59

where just as a digression,

1:27:01

one time when he was, I

1:27:03

don't know, like a little

1:27:06

over a year old. We were

1:27:08

traveling somewhere and we went

1:27:10

to some kind of, it wasn't

1:27:12

like Outback Steakhouse, but Longhorn,

1:27:14

Longhorn Steakhouse, which is like an

1:27:16

Outback. And we

1:27:18

went there and they

1:27:20

had a Starbucks Something

1:27:22

Something dessert. And on

1:27:24

the table was a

1:27:26

little cardboard tent to

1:27:29

promote it. But I

1:27:31

had been taking him

1:27:33

to Starbucks. In a

1:27:35

baby Bjorn on a regular basis for

1:27:37

a while and he pointed to the

1:27:39

Starbucks logo on the card And I

1:27:41

forget what he said, but he you

1:27:43

know he recognized he recognized the Starbucks

1:27:45

logo in a totally different context in

1:27:48

a restaurant And I was like that

1:27:50

as a kid like I just and

1:27:52

I thought it was so the weird

1:27:54

one of the weird things about Pathmark

1:27:56

is they had two house brands they

1:27:58

had and Pathmark was a red white

1:28:00

and blue logo And they

1:28:03

had red and blue Pathmark brand

1:28:05

stuff, but then they had

1:28:07

an even lower priced house brand

1:28:09

called no frills brand and

1:28:11

it was Everything was a white

1:28:13

box and they still had

1:28:15

like a red and blue diagonal

1:28:18

stripe or something that sort

1:28:20

of told you like it's part

1:28:22

of the Pathmark family brand,

1:28:24

but no frills, whatever and Everything

1:28:26

was printed in Helvetica, and

1:28:28

I didn't know what it was

1:28:31

But I kind of, even at

1:28:33

like the age of like

1:28:35

six or seven, got that it

1:28:37

was the perfect... I didn't

1:28:39

even know the word font at

1:28:41

the time, but I knew

1:28:43

that that was the right font

1:28:45

to use for a no

1:28:47

frills house brand white box, no

1:28:50

frills spaghetti, no frills corn

1:28:52

chips or whatever it was. Just

1:28:54

white package. black letters for

1:28:56

Helvetica and that it was and

1:28:58

I just remember and I remember thinking

1:29:00

that Helvetica was like before I

1:29:02

knew what it was named and then

1:29:04

at some point in the 80s

1:29:06

I learned it. was like oh that's

1:29:08

that's that font but I always

1:29:10

thought of it as the neutral font

1:29:12

and that is Swiss design but

1:29:14

that it was sort of The

1:29:17

lack that every every other font goes

1:29:19

from Helvetica that Helvetica is sort of

1:29:21

and it's not true Like I've learned

1:29:23

all the intricacies and the different ways

1:29:25

that that other sans serifs and grotesques

1:29:27

can be designed and you could do

1:29:29

the capital G in a couple different

1:29:31

ways and I realized that But at

1:29:33

the time it just looked like this

1:29:36

is what the complete lack of style

1:29:38

on a font would look like it

1:29:40

would look like this Yeah, but although

1:29:42

it's there's something There's like a style

1:29:44

in its lack of style. You can

1:29:46

project a lot on Helvetica, so it

1:29:48

can be used in a million contexts.

1:29:50

And it still has personality, but the

1:29:52

personality feels like it's derived from the

1:29:54

context instead of from the tight face,

1:29:57

like it lends itself. I

1:29:59

was thinking about, by the way, the, by

1:30:01